Design And Optimization Of Large Area Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell

Due to the limitation of computational efficiency and stability,the traditional three-dimensional simulation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell(PEMFC)often stays on the single channel scale,ignoring the co mmercial proton exchange membrane fuel cell.The real flow field structure of the cell.The active area of fuel cells of practical significance in the market is generally about 300 cm~2.Therefore,aiming at large-area fuel cells,this paper will carry out fluid and electrochemical simulation of bipolar plate fuel cells with different area sizes through computational fluid software Fluent,and select the bipolar plate type with the best performance to assemble the stack.Firstly,by comparing and analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of different fuel cells,proton exchange membrane fuel cells are selected as the research object of this paper.Then,the flow field structure of bipolar plate,which can affect the performance of fuel cell most,is studied.By comparing and analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of different fuel cell bipolar plate flow channels,the parallel flow channel structure which is most suitable for the research object of this paper is selected.Then,the flow field models of bipolar plates with different area sizes of 300 cm~2,500 cm~2and 600 cm~2 are established,and the fluid simulation is carried out by Fluent software,which provides reference for the electrochemical simulation of large-area fuel cells;Subsequently,three PEMFC models with different area sizes were established,and the electrochemical simulation analysis was carried out by Fluent software,and the difference of fuel cell output performance of the three PEMFC models with different area sizes under different cathode relative humidity was obtained;Finally,select the bipolar plate type with the best performance,change the length and number of bipolar plate runners under the condition of constant area,and redesign the two models,Through electrochemical simulation analysis by Fluent software,the difference of fuel cell output performance of PEMFC model with three bipolar plate structures with the same area under different cathode relative humidity is obtained.Finally,the bipolar plate type with the best performance is selected for stack assembly,and the fuel cell test bench is used for experiments.The simulation results are compared with the experimental results,which verify the reliability of the large-area PEMFC model designed in this paper.In this paper,by designing several large-area bipolar plate PEMFC models with different plate types and simulating them under different cathode relative humidity,the bipolar plate type with the best performance is selected for the stack test,and the simulation results are consistent with the experimental results.Therefore,the proton exchange membrane fuel cell structure with large area bipolar plates in this paper has certain reference value in the practical engineering application of fuel cells.